, and
mapped the coasts.

The first settlement of Saxons in Britain occurred in the year Four
Hundred Forty-nine. They did not come as invaders, as did the Romans
five hundred years before; their numbers were too few, and their arms
too crude to mean menace to the swarthy, black-haired Britons. These
fair stranger-folk were welcomed as curiosities and were allowed to
settle and make themselves homes. Word was sent back to Saxony and
Jute-Land and more settlers came. In a few years came a shipload of
Engles, with their women and children, red-haired, freckled, tawny. They
tilled the soil with a faith and an intelligence such as the Britons
never brought to bear: very much as the German settlers follow the
pioneers and grow rich where the Mudsock fails. Naturally the
fair-haired girls found favor in the sight of the swarthy Britons.
Marriages occurred, and a new type of man-child appeared as the months
went by. More Engles came. A century passed, and the coast, from Kent
to the Firth of Forth, was dotted with the farms and homes of the people
from the Baltic. There were now occasional protests from the original
holders, and fights followed, when the Britons retreated before the
strangers, or else were very glad to make terms. Victory is a matter of
staying-power. The Engles had come to stay.

But a new enemy had appeared--the Norsemen or Danes. These were
sea-nomads who acknowledged no man as master. Rough, bold, laughing at
disaster, with no patience to build or dig or plow, they landed but to
ravish, steal and lay waste, and then boarded their craft, sailing away,
joying in the ruin they had wrought.

The next year they came back. The industry and the thrift of the Engles
made Britain a land of promise, a storehouse where the good things of
life could be secured much more easily than by creating or producing
them. And so now, before this common foe, the Britons, Jutes, Celts,
Saxons and Engles united to punish and expel the invaders.

The calamity was a blessing--as most calamities are. From being a dozen
little kingdoms, Britain now became one. A "Cyng," or captain, was
chosen--an Engle, strong of arm, clear of brain, blue of eye, with long
yellow hair. He was a man who commanded respect by his person and by his
deeds. His name was Egbert.

King Alfred, or Elfred, was born at Wantage, Berkshire, in the year
Eight Hundred Forty-nine. He was the grandson of Egbert, a great man,
and the son of Ethelwulf, a man of me